


The Harvest of Orhoch

by kangeiko



Category: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Karhidish tales, Original Mythology, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 10:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: The stain of murder wears heavy upon the soul.The King of Orhoch seeks to name his heir, though it is no easy thing.





	The Harvest of Orhoch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luzula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/gifts).



> A huge thank you to karanguni, for reviewing a million drafts and kicking this into shape. I couldn't have done it without you!
> 
> Luzula - I loved your prompt of the myths and legends of Karhide, and had a lot of fun writing this. I hope you enjoy it!

 

**THE HARVEST OF ORHOCH**

 

  _A North Karhidish tale, as told in Charuthe_  
_by Erie Orr rem ir Orhochaven and recorded by_  
_Ong Tot Oppong, Investigator, of the first Ekumenical_  
_landing party on Gethen/Winter, Cycle 93 E.Y. 1448, in_  
_response to the query regarding Orr’s Domain name,_  
_which does not correspond to any Domain in Karhide._

 

 

 

Long ago, before the days of King Argaven I, who made Karhide one kingdom, the Domain of Orhoch was northernmost in Karhide and the coldest place where any humans might live on Earth. To live in Orhoch was to live in a land ringed by the Pering Ice. It was to know that your Hearth was the Storm-border and that if it should fail, the glacier would creep inward, and winter would claim for itself more land than humanity might spare.

The people who lived in Orhoch were the hardiest of the early people of Karhide, tall and broad and strong of will. In Orhoch the Ice was not a visitor at the door, but lived within the Hearths of its people through the year. They grew no tender crops, but strong tubers and hardy breadapple, and those would only yield a harvest in years to come and no sooner. It was a land where you would plant one summer and harvest the next, or later still; a land where if you erred one year, you knew how many years were left to you and your children.

Such a land did not suffer rulers easily. It was a rich place, for all its brutality, for Orhoch was one of the few places in all of Karhide where you could find the minerals needed for the Chabe stoves, which could not be fashioned without them. Such a wealth draws many to it, and it was so in Orhoch, where the King’s Hearth was one where murders and bloodshed were common, and rulers changed with the seasons.

It is a dangerous thing, to have the crown sit atop too many heads. Those who fear to be killed in their beds often bide their wisdom and do not share their plans with advisors, but rather sleep with a weapon close to hand. They do not plant ahead and they reap more than they should, knowing they will not live to see the next year’s harvest. And so, as the years went on, a rot set deep in the Domain of Orhoch. The terror of its Kings grew such that all the focus of the Inner Hearth was on the survival of the King, and Orhoch is not a land that tolerates such neglect.

Famines were common, and more harvests failed with each passing year. One year, the famine was such that almost half the people of Orhoch perished. 

It is a cold thing, to be so rich and yet so poor; to look at the faces of your children and know that the land will not suffer them to live to adulthood. To bury them beneath the Ice, and know that - even in death - the earth would not claim them as its own.

If things had stayed thus, there would have been no people of Orhoch: no mines, no minerals, no stoves. The land would have been lost to the Ice, and perhaps the whole of Karhide would have followed.

But all things must change, as the ice carves the land, though it may take a thousand years. And so it was at Orhoch, where, after bringing such change, the last of the Kings of Orhoch lay dying.

The King, whose name was Irath Thane rem ir Orhochaven, had spent much of his shifgrethor in youth in winning the throne, and it had caused much bloodshed. He had killed his brothers, the kemmerings of his brothers, and the children of his brothers’ flesh, and all the kemmering-sons they had. Some fled, but most did not, and so died in their beds or in their kemmering’s beds, or on the ice. It is said that the snow in Orhoch is still stained red with their blood.

The King did not do this because he feared his brothers, or hated them. It caused him much heart-ache to kill them, and he knew he lost his shifgrethor with each death, and yet he knew if they lived it would be worse for him. For the King had been born in the year of the great famine, and had seen his father killed by his uncle, and his uncle by his uncle’s kemmering, and so on and so on, until that whole generation of the Hearth had died and he had been put upon the throne.

At his coronation, the new King looked around him and he saw his brothers, and he thought to how he had come to the throne. _What will this crown cost my sons? What will it cost my people?_ he asked himself, and he saw that they may starve for his mistakes; they, or their children. It is the way in Orhoch, where you must sow what your children may reap, though your hands may bleed with the cold. The harvest in Orhoch, it is said, is often watered with blood.

Orhochaven was a good King, and a wise King, and he saw what he must sow in the earth to secure his people’s harvest, though his heart ached with the pain of it.

The worst of the deaths was the first one, and that death was of the King’s eldest brother, who was his kemmering. That brother, Efech, did not have a son or a kemmering-son with the King, though they loved each other dearly. Having no children they had no cause to separate, nor spend their kemmer with others.

And so it was that on Opposthe Gor of the first year of his reign the new King did take his kemmering to his bed, and there spend his pleasure with him for five days. And it was there, in the fading glow of kemmer, that the King did put a knife between the ribs of Efech, who he loved dearly, and who had to die so that Orhoch might live.

It is a high price to pay for Kingship, but the King paid it. Having killed his kemmering, he sent out his people to the homes of his brothers, and he killed all those within their Hearths, and from there he went to the Hearths of their kemmerings, and he killed all those within as well. And the people were afraid, for they did not understand this madness, and they feared that the King meant to kill all those in his land.

But it was a different kind of madness that possessed Orhochaven, and he had spent it in the space of a few nights. Thereafter he suffered no one to kill another in his Domain, for it grieved him to see brother raise a hand to brother. Those he himself had killed were buried in a single tomb at the end of the palace gardens, so that he might visit them even during the heaviest snowfall and talk to his kemmering.

In the years that followed Orhoch prospered, though the growth was strange and insular. Its people found a constancy in their ruler that they had never known before, and the land repaid them doubly for all they planted within it. The mines stayed open throughout the year, and the cargo routes were secured against the Ice, and all across Orhoch the people grew rich, and fat, and happy.

Yet there was a darkness to the land that could not be denied. The King had killed his own Hearth for the safety of Orhoch, though none outside Orhoch could comprehend it. They saw only that the King’s brothers were dead, and it was the King who had carried out such a monstrous deed. Shath, the closest Domain to them, looked at Orhoch with fear and mistrust, and did not wish to be neighbours with them. _The King has spent the shifgrethor of the people,_ the people of Shath whispered, though they were not sure they believed it. Shifgrethor could only be lost if both sides saw it, yet plainly the King of Orhoch was mad, and madmen had no shifgrethor and could not be held to it.

Thus the years passed. The King of Orhoch - who had come to the throne a young man - lingered on that throne far beyond his own expectations and that of his enemies, and his madness grew with every year. They said that he would spend his days in the family tomb, talking to his departed kemmering; that he wept and tore his hair and swore fealty to the dead. They said that he took no joy in life nor in kemmer, but sired his children dutifully and sent them away, lest he pollute them with his presence. They said… they said many things, and yet the King lingered, his madness in his eyes and life still vital in his limbs.

 _Surely, he must die soon,_ the Orhoch Lords whispered, and they thought uneasily of what might happen if the King’s heir were to be as the King had been in youth. For it is a hard thing to have a madman at your door, whether he be ruler or neighbour, and harder still to open your door to him for three days and three nights, and know that he comes bearing a knife.

At long last, the King grew so old that even those who loved him in his madness saw that his time had come. His face had gone grey with age, and his skin was covered in fine wrinkles, and his hands trembled. He took to his bed, and he could not rise, and he saw his end approaching.

The stain of murder wears heavy upon the soul, and a dying man feels it keenly. The King had felt it seep into his spirit and he knew the stench of it, second only to that of self-killing. He had done the thing so he must put of love of Orhoch, yet he did not wish that same stain on the souls of his kemmering-sons after he was gone. He cursed that he had not borne a child of his flesh, and he cursed that his kemmering-sons had not been borne by his brother, for that child would have been his heir. (There had been a singular rage in his eyes as he cursed this last, his Lords whispered, not daring to speak openly. As if this was one thing more than the old man had been able to bear.)

In the end, even a King’s wishes do not matter. What is, is: the King had killed his brothers and his kemmering; his kemmering-sons had been borne by Lords of the Domain but none of them by princes, and they each had a claim to the throne as strong as the others but no stronger.

And so, Orhochaven - repentant of his folly and seeing what might befall Orhoch after he was gone - at last called his children to him.

* * *

The King’s sons, summoned, gathered about the King’s sick-bed: a dozen strong men, fair of face and of body, within a few years of each other in age.

“I have no child of my flesh,” the old King said, “and I have no wish for my Domain to fall to fighting and ruin, as each Hearth vies for my throne. Therefore I ask you to settle who is heir between you.”

There was a pause at this, as it was unexpected. The King waited a while, but his sons did not respond. “I have no wish for you to fight each other,” he said at last. “I wish for you to choose one among you to rule, and for the others to pledge to him, and to be at his back, and to be his Lords but no more.” Saying this the King paused again, and again there was no response. “I may choose an heir, but my choice dies as I die, and there would be none who would respect the word of a dead man over a live King. And if I choose and the others do not agree, there would be bloodshed, and the Hearths would fall to murder and to treason, and all of Orhoch would be spent in eating this sin.”

“ _Your_ sin,” one of his sons - the eldest, Aram - said, and stepped forward. He was the most beautiful of the old King’s kemmering-sons, but he was also one of the least powerful, for his parent was not a powerful Lord but rather a beautiful one, who had caught the old King’s eye during kemmer. He knew himself to be vulnerable should there be a dispute, for he could not have as many men around him as his brothers, if they chose that he must die.

“Perhaps,” Aram suggested, “we may ask for an answer from the Foretellers at Thangering Fastness. If we all agree to abide by it, we may have an heir without spilling each other’s blood.” He did not look around to the others, but merely took the increase in his shifgrethor at this, even as his father’s decreased. But his father had killed his brothers, and his kemmering, and the lands around Orhoch were a little fearful of the madmen who must dwell within, and so he did not feel a pang at causing this. No: the King had laid his honour bare in committing such a sin, for all that the court did not mention it, and had not mentioned it for a long time, since before Aram had been born.

The Lord Aram had no wish to die, and no particular wish to rule. He had an heir of his body, and he had three strong kemmering-sons, and although he was not especially rich nor powerful, what he had sufficed for his needs and for that of his kemmering, to whom he had sworn a vow. He did not wish to rule but he wished to die even less, and he knew that if one of his brothers took the throne, it would come to that. That is not to say that his brothers were evil men, or mad, as the old King was mad, but merely that his brothers knew what Aram knew: the stain runs deep. It cannot be washed clean with mere words.

If one of them took the throne, the others would not last the night.

All twelve of the brothers knew this and saw no options open to them, save taking the throne and thereby guaranteeing their safety, and that of their Hearth. But when Aram spoke the others paused, and they saw the wisdom of his words. For the Foretellers were not aligned with any Hearth and there would be no loss of shifgrethor if they agreed to abide by the truth of their words. And if one of them did not agree, or agreed and broke that vow, well, the others would be united and there would be strength in that unity. And perhaps not all of them might die.

They did not wish to die. They were young men, still, and they had children, and they had much in their lives they treasured, and they longed for a way that would let this continue. If the Foretellers were to name the heir, then perhaps, perhaps…

But the old King shook his head. “It will not work,” he said wearily, as might a man who comes too late to the knowledge that he has set out without his coat, and it is too late to turn back. There were tears in his eyes, as there had been when he had cursed Efech, and wished for that thirteenth son who would have let him rest easy. “It will not work, I say.”

The brothers did not listen. They liked Aram’s idea for it gave them the purpose that the King’s death threatened to take away, and it meant also that all of them would need to go to the Fastness together. If they travelled together then none of them would be left behind to take the throne, or to be killed, or worse. They would travel as twelve, and they would question as twelve, and when they returned they would be eleven brothers attending their King.

The King shook his head again and said it would not work, but would not say why. His strength was fading fast and it was clear that he would not last the year. If it was a hard winter, he may be gone by Irrem, Aram thought uneasily, and so he urged his brothers to hurry. They would travel over the ice to Thangering Fastness, and there they would ask the Foretellers to name the true heir of the King of Orhoch.

The brothers set off the next morning at Eighth Hour. The nights are long in Orhoch, and it would be Tenth Hour before they had any sunlight, yet the going was easier in the dark. There was then a road northwards, to Ech, and it was well-lit with the luminescent path-lights of Orhoch Domain which stand the height of four grown men in summer, when the snow is low.

There is no land transport in that Domain, for the snow is heavy with the salt and minerals that made Orhoch so rich, and its land so poor. The tracks of the landboat would stick fast to the snow as if the landboat were tracking through stew, and it would be stranded long before a man would tire. Over-land, then, is a matter for men and sledges, and for the slow, careful grudge through the well-lit paths to Ech. For that Orhoch is the capital of that Domain, all roads in Orhoch Domain have ever-led to Ech and to the mines that ring that place, like children crouched around a Hearth to warm themselves.

The brothers thus went over-land. They packed six sledges, and they paired and took turns with the sledges, so that they might share the burden of their journey equally. Aram was paired with Takouhi, who was the brother he was closest to. Takouhi was the only one of the King’s sons to hesitate over the journey; he was with child, and he worried that the journey might loosen his womb and threaten his son. It is not the custom of Orhoch men to travel when their wombs have quickened, but instead to retire to the bathing houses and the hot springs and to let the child bake to completion. Takouhi had hesitated to enter his seclusion as his father had faded, and now he was a day out of Orhoch, and still over a half-month away from Ech. Even the lightest of the trails to Ech would take its toll.

“It is true,” Aram said when Takouhi voiced his concerns during the first night out on the path. The two of them sat sweating in the tent, the stove lit between them. “But is it not better that we risk this so that your son has a chance at life? For if we do not…”

“If we do not, I do not believe that you would raise a hand to me,” Takouhi said to him, soft and complacent, his round face trusting. “Not you, Aram. Not for all the kingdoms of Earth.”

Aram knew that this was so. There was nothing that would compel him to act in that fashion, save in his Hearth’s defence. But he also knew that the others might think differently, and that it did not matter whether he spilled Takouhi’s blood or if it was spilled by someone else; all that mattered was that more killing would only poison already-stained Orhoch.

“It is well that we travel together,” Aram said. He reached out a hand to Takouhi in the warmth they had made together, wrapped around each other in the cocoon of their tent. “I would have us both survive this. Us, and your son.” And mine, he thought, but did not say. He knew that Takouhi also had other children at his Hearth, and worried just as much over his kemmering and his kemmering-sons.

“I would have us all survive,” Takouhi whispered, and it came out as a gentle sound, almost unheard over the soft rustling of the snow outside. It was a strange whisper, almost ashamed; as if Takouhi lost his honour in admitting love for his brothers. As if such a thing had been bled from Orhoch, and none might feel it now.

Aram did not answer him that night, nor the night after, when Takouhi said the same thing as if in prayer. The path to Ech and to Thangering Fastness beyond was a long one, and the lights were low in the heavy snow of winter, almost low enough to touch. Their faint glow gave off no heat and swayed gently in the push and pull of the wind, blanketed as it was in the swirl of the blizzard that would grow in strength until the winter months were long past.

The land of Orhoch is one of extremes, and none more so than its paths. The lights there do not fade, and yet they do not give the heat one would wish for, for all that they resembled the echo of the Chabe stoves the brothers carried with them. Instead, they lit the way as stars do, winding along the edge of the ice-sheet towards the northern city of Ech.

It was hard-going, that journey, though they had walked it in years past. But none would walk into the blizzard if there was a choice, and they had none. To stave off the cold the brothers walked in a close-knit line, taking turns each day to let a new pair face the wind head-on and thus break the worst of its rage. They camped directly on the path each night, when the light grew too faint for them to follow, or the storm too strong for them to bear it. The six tents formed a circle against the storm, the entrances facing each other. This would protect the doors from becoming snow-sodden, and their supplies from becoming loose and being lost in the night.

They did not have to carry overly much for this part of their journey, as they merely needed to reach Ech. There, they knew, they could purchase provisions and replace anything they had lost. But the final stretch - across the glacier, beyond Ech, where even the pesthry did not venture - they would have to carry all they needed with them.

It was Odstreth Thern, eighteen days out of Orhoch, when the brothers reached Ech.

“We have had a light journey thus far,” Stragu said, thoughtful. He was tall, and comely, and dark, and his smile was the brightest of the twelve brothers. He was the youngest of the King’s sons, and he had no children of his own yet, being barely twenty years and therefore only in the last few years having gone through kemmer. He spoke confidently of the last stretch of their journey, and of how they must prepare to traverse it. “The snow has been kind, and we have had no rain. That cannot last as we near the coast and the salt grows thicker.” He breathed deep. “We should bring with us the purifier.”

Stragu had ventured further north than his brothers, and knew the terrain a little better. He had packed purifiers and humidifiers for each sledge, though it made them heavy and cumbersome. “Better that, and leave some rations behind.”

This far north-east, the snow was so saturated with salt that it was not safe to drink. If they wanted to be certain of their sanity, the brothers would have to purify the melted snow-water of its salt and minerals before it would be potable. The salt in the snow around Thangering Fastness,  thick and sticky as congealing blood, would make the path almost impassable.

Some said that beyond Thangering Fastness the snow had so much salt that it could not be borne, even in summer months: that even a day spent out in that field of white would leave a man gasping, dry as a bone in the preserving house.

 _The Ice suffers none to walk upon it,_ goes the old Orhochian saying. Those that try are still there, sealed in time as insects caught in tree-sap.

Stragu now spoke of the question the brothers planned to ask. They would have a long journey from Ech to Thangering Fastness, and much time to ponder it. “We must make sure to ask correctly. We cannot be caught out in vagueness.”

This was a good suggestion, and the other brothers agreed. That first night on the ice out from Ech, the weather being _kroxet_ and a good time for speech, the brothers gathered in the circle made of their tents and spoke of the question they wished to ask.

Some wished to ask who the best King to succeed King Orhochaven would be, feeling that it was their responsibility to ensure that Orhoch had a wise ruler who would bring prosperity to the land. It did not matter who was the true heir to the throne; it mattered who would serve Orhoch best. What use did the land have for legitimacy? “It is the man who plants his crops and waits each year for them to ripen, and each year, the crops do not oblige him. Does he spend his time waiting for that harvest?” No, said the old proverb: a man may wait a lifetime for a harvest to yield fruit. Better to plant again, and to fish, and to trade, and in so doing to survive.

Aram agreed with this. But still such a question might be misinterpreted, he said. “We may be told who is the strongest, or most willing to kill the others.”

The brothers fell into a silence at this. It did not matter how fruitful the land would be in such hands, if it was tilled with blood.

At last, Takouhi stirred. “How did you phrase it that first time, when we first spoke of it?”

“Who is the true heir,” one of the other brothers said. “It is not quite the same thing, the heir and the Kingship.”

“True,” Aram agreed. “One does not necessarily follow the other. But one we may influence, and the other not.” If the Foretellers said the truth of who would rule, it did not follow that he would rule wisely, nor that he would rule without the blood of his brothers on his sword.

“But if we swear fealty to the heir… if we swear that we would raise a hand to all those who would harm him…”

It might work, Aram thought. Their father had protected Orhoch as best he could, though the price of his people’s safety had been his shifgrethor. Surely, if they worked together, they could find a better way?

So the brothers agreed, and pledged themselves to the defence of the heir, and swore to kill those who would harm him, and their sons, and their sons’ sons. This, they felt, would be enough to keep each other true to to the rightful heir, and to protect their own Hearth. For if they did not raise a hand to him then they would be safe; and if they served their King with loyalty, then their children would be safe. The King - for all his faults - had raised kind, wise children, and none of the brothers wished to spill the others’ blood. “We stand together.”

Having pledged themselves thus, the brothers took up their sledges once more. It was three days out of Ech and the snow was _sastrugi_ : long wind-waves along the edges of the path, sticky with salt. This far north there were no hemmens trees, and only the orgrevy shrubs survived. A little further along and even they would grow sparse and then not at all, as though the land itself resisted all attempts at life.

Takouhi’s belly grew to a gentle roundness during their journey. Aram fretted over it, and Stragu, and the others. The sledge itself was no great hardship, but the snow made each step a heavy one, and each breath pained, until at last the brothers divided up the pulling of the sledges between eleven instead of twelve and Takouhi walked unencumbered beside Aram. “I can still pull,” Takouhi insisted, pale-faced with effort. “I am not so far gone as that.”

Aram would not spare the energy to turn to look at him. “You should have stayed at Ech, brother. There is the hot spring there. We would have come back for you.” It was, in truth, not much of a promise: all roads, after all, lead to Ech.

Takouhi was silent a long while. “I am my father’s son.” He said nothing further, but Aram understood. For all that neither of them wished to rule, there was shifgrethor involved in their undertaking. If Takouhi were to abandon it half-done...

It was slow going, and the weather seemed set against them. For every two steps forward, they were forced by the wind to take a step back. There was _sove-snow_ two days hence, relentless, as if the sea was pouring into their eyes and mouths. “I would rather be drowned,” Aram said one night, shaking, the tent-poles awkward in his frozen hands.

Stragu smiled humourlessly at him as he worked to set up his own tent-poles, and advised him to rest while he could. The weather was still mild, for Ech, and what was mild for Ech was as midsummer in Thangering Fastness.

Two days later, Takouhi had to be pulled on Aram’s sledge, the stove tucked beside him. Aram said nothing as he wrapped his own spare blanket about his brother’s belly, and gave him purified water to drink.

 _The Ice suffers none to walk upon it,_ he thought that night. And yet they could pull the sledges, still, and so they pressed northwards.

* * *

It was Yrny Thanern when they finally reached Thangering Fastness; _retekh_ weather, the frozen ice-needles that crunched underfoot more crystal than snow. The _sove-snow_ had melted, and then frozen, and then melted and frozen again, and though that was not permafrost beneath their feet it inched its way towards it.

Beyond Thangering Fastness, Aram knew, nothing could survive. No fish, no insect, no plant could live in the tundra, though it be richer still than all of Ech’s mines.

The Indwellers looked at them appraisingly when they arrived: the twelve beautiful brothers, the children of the mad King of Orhoch, worn to almost nothing by the journey so that even young Stragu’s features were slack with hunger and exhaustion.

“Why have you come here?” the Weaver asked at the gates of the Fastness, and there was a strange look in his eyes. He seemed to be afraid of them, though they had come with no weapons.

Aram realised that the Weaver did not know what to make of them, having arrived thus; that the Weaver feared the brothers meant the Foretellers some harm.

“We have come to Ask,” he said. He raised his arms to show them empty, turning his palms over and letting them rest on the elbows of the Weaver in supplication. “We - we have a question.”

The Weaver seemed taken aback and no less afraid, looking from one brother to the other, seeing their frostbitten faces and the way they held each other for comfort. Takouhi stirred weakly on the sledge. “All of you?”

“All of us.”

The Weaver said nothing to this, but led them into the Fastness, his movements hesitant. There, the brothers rested some days, waiting. Takouhi ate deeply once he was roused and let the warmth of the Fastness revive him; the others ate a little more sparingly, for they knew the difficulty with which provisions reached this place.

For all his initial wariness, the Weaver soon warmed to the brothers in a strange way, as if he had Seen something that had moved him to pity. Perhaps, Aram though, he had Seen what threat lay around them if they should fail in their Asking.

The waiting took a long time; longer, perhaps, than would be necessary for a Celibate to enter kemmer. The brothers had brought the payment with them - jewels, and silver, and fine cloth embroidered with a delicate hand - and they offered it to the Weaver. The Weaver, looking disturbed, refused. “We shall name our price,” he said, “when you ask your question.”

This was not what the brothers had expected. What if the named price was not within their means? To have come so far and to be turned away…

“We are not yet turned away,” Aram counselled the others. “There is yet hope.” _And we may yet pay the price,_ he thought, though it weighed heavily on him. He thought of his children, safe in his Hearth in Orhoch, and he wished that he knew how to best protect them.

“Has anyone ventured into the tundra?” he asked the Weaver one day as they waited, watching from the northernmost tower of the Fastness.

Beside him, the Weaver smiled as if this was a childish thing to ask. “Of course. But none have returned.” He gestured towards the closest of the peaks, where the glacier had long-ago been driven through the ground so that it now formed a mountain of ice and salt. “Some have made it almost half-way to the foot of the mountain. If you like, I can fetch a seeing-glass and let you see them. The snow-fall makes for some distinctive drifts across the bodies.”

Aram demurred. He returned back down into the inner rooms, discomfited.

Three days later, the Weaver sought out Aram and told him that the Foretelling group was ready. They would be answered, and they would leave - that was why the Foretellers had waited so long to convene, though doubtless several of them must have gone through kemmer in the meantime. But they would not host the Askers after they gave the Answer. “If you are prepared,” the Weaver said.

That night, the Foretelling group of Thangering Fastness convened, and the brothers - sweating in their terror - joined them in the temple. It was a cold room and a dry one, for all that the fires were lit at every hearth. At its centre the Indwellers were hooded and hidden from their sight. The circle of the Foretelling was wide and imperfect, as it had Aram within it, and the other brothers spread out in a semi-circle at his back. One of the Indwellers was glazed with kemmer, and Aram shivered as he thought of the days he had spent on the way from Ech, wrecked with longing for someone who wasn’t there. At least he had gone through it on his own; to have someone with him - the Pervert - who felt it as strongly as he, and yet have them deny each other… it did not seem to him a fair price to pay for Seeing, though he supposed that is why the Foretellers felt able to demand such a price for their answers.

The Weaver was opposite him in the circle, the fire lit between them. The Weaver’s hood was back, and his face looked older in the firelight.

“Hovsep Aram rem ir Gar, do you speak for your brothers?” The Weaver asked.

“I do.”

“And do you agree to abide by the price we have set for your question?”

Aram swallowed. “I do.”

“And do you agree to go from here, and to never return, after we have answered you?”

That was painful, though expected. Once you have Asked at a Fastness, you may not return to it; if any of the brothers would Ask in future, they would have to travel outside of Orhoch to do so. Aram felt Takouhi’s eyes on his back. “I do,” he said slowly.

“Then, you may ask your question, and we may tell you the price of it.”

In that moment, Aram hesitated. He had the question, and he knew that if he did not ask it correctly, all would be ruin. He knew he must marshal his words, and ask in a way which did not allow for misunderstanding, nor for prevarication. “We have one question, Weaver. Who is the true and rightful heir of King Irath Thane rem ir Orhochaven, the King of Orhoch?”

Not the wisest ruler. Not the strongest ruler. Not who would make Orhoch richer still, or hold at bay the grasping hands of the Pering Ice. No; the brothers had agreed that shifgrethor compelled them to ask only this. The legitimacy of the succession would be guaranteed by their actions, and the success of the reign by their loyalty.

The harvest in Orhoch is watered with blood, and the brothers would gladly pay that price for Orhoch’s sake.

The Weaver seemed to grow brighter at this Ask, seeing within what Aram and his brothers could not hope to see without. “The question is answerable,” the Weaver said. He smiled at the brothers, at Aram, and there was a pain in his face at it. “Our price, Hovsep Aram rem ir Gar, son of Irath Thane rem ir Orhochaven, is that all of you abide by the oath you swore on Obberny Thern, out in the white of the snow and ice.”

 _The Ice suffers none to walk upon it_ , Aram thought, and shivered. Yet he knew that those who think the Ice an absence of life are fools; for the Ice sees all, and the Seeing at Thangering Fastness listens. All that is said in the Ice is heard by it, and all that is sworn upon the Ice is subject to it. The King’s act had stained the land as much as it had protected its people, and the land had as much of a right as any in Orhoch to seek redress. 

“Agreed,” Aram said, his voice wet for the first time since they had arrived in this salt-dry place. He felt more wetness on his face, and knew the tears were of grief, though he could not call them back. A hand reached from his right and closed round his; Takouhi’s hand, small and soft. _We stand together,_ they had said, and the Ice had heard them.

The Weaver turned to the Indwellers then, and the circle closed within the Foretelling.

It was a strange darkness that sprang to mind when Aram closed his eyes and thought of Truth. It was not the darkness of the night on the Ice, nor his closed eyelids in his family-bed in Orhoch. It was the wet heat of breath, the heat of life, deep within the Earth: a darkness that could only be found at Thangering Fastness.

Other Fastnesses had fallen over time and been rebuilt, Aram knew; all but one. The madness at Asen Fastness was the only one which had burned out the core of the Handdara, where the disciplines had abandoned it for other temples. It was not the case that the building or the temple had been hurt or damaged by what took place, but Indwellers could not achieve the untrance there thereafter; too much having been Seen at Asen for anything to be Seen again. And so Asen Fastness lay empty, left open to the snow and the Ice.

Yet the madness at Asen was not so far from the madness at other Fastnesses, for the Foretellers are but the voice of what was Seen, and what was Seen is what was Known, though none may not own to it. It was the way of the Foretelling: that each person knew the truth they Asked, and yet still walked the Ice and climb to the Fastnesses to Ask it.

And so it was the way with this Foretelling.

“The child!” The Weaver cried out at last, as if wounded. Blood dripped slowly from his eyes and ears, and he shook where he stood. The Zanies were cackling, though it seemed at a terrifying thing, their feet beating a tattoo on the stone floor as they twisted in their dance, leaving the Pervert and the Celibates to sprawl in the dust, helpless and caught by what they Saw.

“The child!” The Weaver cried out again, terrified, and his voice shook. “The child, dead in the womb! The son of King Thane, borne by his brother and kemmering, killed as Efech was killed, killed so that the King might rule!”

 _We stand together,_ they had sworn on the Ice, all twelve of them. And yet…

There should have been thirteen.

The brothers remained frozen in their positions of supplication, Takouhi’s hand still resting in Aram’s as if they could withstand the truth of it together. _Did he know?_ Aram wondered painfully, his heart in his throat. Had the King suspected that Efech was with child? Or had he only found out after he was dead? _Was that what drove him mad?_

Takouhi’s hand was cold in his grip.

Slowly, painfully, the Weaver turned to face them, the blood still wet on his cheeks. “You have been Answered,” he said. There was a terrible judgement on his face, a pity painful to look at. “Go.”

 _It will not work,_ the old King had said of their journey, and he had not said why. _He must have known,_ Aram thought, his hands trembling. _Surely, surely he must have known._

It was the end of it.

One by one, the brothers stumbled out of the building, blinking in the light of the day. They had been inside the temple for many hours. Their sledges had been packed and stood ready at the gates of the Fastness, as if the Indwellers planned to push them outside the moment the Foretelling had concluded.

Stragu was the first to find his voice, reaching out a hand to Aram. “Wait. Aram, wait.”

Beside him, Takouhi stared at his feet and said nothing, shivering, then collapsed in a heap, sliding to sit on the ground, his head in his hands. The others followed one by one, leaning against each other as if they were children. The truth of what they had seen creeped into their bones as needles, and they could not forswear it.

“We do not have to say it,” Takouhi said suddenly, as they sat in the snow and stared up at the sky and waited for the Indwellers to cast them out. “We can say that the Telling was unanswered, or that they selected one of us. Or even - that the one was dead, but not say who. _We do not have to say it._ ”

Aram looked at him, and he said nothing. He looked back at the temple, at the closed doors that they were barred from ever passing again. The Fastness drew many to it, some who wished to be ignorant and others who wished to learn. Those who learned were often disappointed, and went away cursing the name of Thangering, and of the Handdarata who dwelt within. For had they not already known the truth of what they asked? And why had they surrendered such a steep price for an answer that helped not at all?

 _We stand together,_ Aram thought. His heart ached, though whether it was for Orhoch or for himself, he could not say.

They remained at the gates for a long while, until at last the Weaver emerged, his face drawn. Then, one by one, they left the Fastness, pulling the sledges behind them.

The Weaver watched them go, unblinking, and ordered the gates to be fastened behind them and the bolts drawn, so that they may not turn around and ask for sanctuary from the storm.

For the brothers, it was the snow, or nothing at all.

* * *

When the Lord Aram returned to Orhoch, it was Odeps Irrem, and the Thaw was fast approaching.

The sledge he had pulled on his journey northwards had been almost destroyed by the salt-ice around the Fastness, and he had had to buy a new one at Ech. It was often the way, and there were sledges to purchase at Ech for that reason alone.

Aram himself had the pinched, hungry look of a man half-dead, his eyes wild. His gloves were stiff with blood, and his feet frostbitten, and he walked as if a great weight was on his shoulders. His tears had dried in great streaks down his face, crusted with his salt and the salt of the Ice, sore and open as wounds on his beautiful face. He returned alone, without an answer to give to his father, though his return was answer enough, and his eyes held the madness of the man ill-used.

The King his father yet lived, though his time was growing ever-nearer. He saw the loss of his sons in the absences by Aram’s side, and he grieved it, yet he did not say this to Aram’s face. Aram, the most beautiful of his sons, who he had not expected to return from Thangering Fastness alive.

The morning of Getheny Moth, the old King felt his strength fade from him, and he called his remaining son, his heir, to his side. Aram came at First Hour, his face closed off, his eyes dark, and he dismissed the King’s advisers and his Lords. The sores on his face had not yet healed fully, and stung to redness as if he had been weeping. There was a strange smell to him, a hunting-smell, though it was not the season for it. He had never wished to hunt in his youth, being tender-hearted.

“My father,” he said, and he drew close, listening to the King’s breath rattle in his chest. “Why have you summoned me?” This close, the smell of blood and salt was stronger, almost overwhelming.

The old King swallowed, feeling his hands tremble. He looked up at the beautiful face of his only son, and he Saw, and his madness left him, and it was a terrible thing. “Aram. Oh, my son. What have you done?”

Aram pulled out his knife from its sheath where it was strapped to his belly. It was clean, of course; of course it was clean. He could not walk into the King’s bedchamber with it still bloody from his work, though it had taken him some time, and he could hear still the cries of those he loved dearest. His eyes were aflame, as if the Weaver’s burning had left a mark in him. As if the fire of the inner Earth at Thangering had burned all but the blood and salt away. “What I have sworn to do.”

It had been an oath to cleanse the stain from the land’s soul, sworn on the Ice. And did not the Ice listen, and hold men to their oaths, when they would not hold themselves?

* * *

“I am Answered.” So said the note written by Hovsep Aram rem ir Gar, he who slew his Hearth and his brothers’ Hearths, and thereby ended the line of Orhochaven.

It is a hard thing, to swear on the Ice, for the Ice listens, and it does not forgive a debt. It is a harder thing still to turn your eyes southwards, and leave the Ice behind; it is the blood that runs in the veins of every child of Orhoch, and the salt of his tears. It is the warmth of the Chabe stove, and the luminescence of the path-lights still used in the northern-most Domains. And yet -

Yet -

The killing of the brothers had been a hard thing for the land to bear. The neighbours of Orhoch looked uneasily at the Domain, and wondered if the madness of its king was catching.

After the madness that gripped Aram had been spent, the bodies were buried, and wept over, and given to the snow, so that it might take them where the Earth would not. For Aram had done a terrible thing in killing his kin, and a yet more terrible thing in killing himself. And yet - for all his sins - he had never been forsworn, nor an oath-breaker. It was something, at least.

The dead took three days to bury, and the mourning for the mad King and the lost heirs lasted a full year. After that year, there was a silence: none wished to take the mad King’s place. The crown was cursed, they murmured, and the Lords grew more uneasy with each passing day. The stain of the sins of Orhochaven was such that it had poisoned the Domain, so that it had taken the end of the King’s line to cleanse it.

And so it was that thereafter no Lord was named King of Orhoch, for to do so would be to invite disaster into the Hearth. The Domain of Orhoch was dissolved, and left as a nameless place on the political maps of Karhide. Though the city of Orhoch remains, the Domain it once ruled is gone. It is a liminal place, a porous land between the inhabited Domains and the salt-death of the Pering Ice. 

The land has much changed in the years hence: the border has crept south and much of Orhoch has been lost to the Ice, though some people still call it home. The people who now live in Orhoch have no King, no Lord and no law, and submit themselves to no man. They are the workers of the Ech mines, or the Indwellers at the Fastness, and neither requires much ruling. At Ech and at Thangering, there is still humanity; humans still hold the land that was Orhoch Domain against the Pering Ice, though the Domain is invisible and hidden by the snow. But the cities have largely gone and there is no trade caravan between them, only the export route of the mines carrying their cargo to the rest of Karhide. The path-lights have faded, and there is nothing to light the way of those who would Ask at the Fastness.

All that remains of the Kings of Orhoch is carried in the people who fled the Ice southwards to Shath and to Charuthe, taking the name of their home with them. They could not stay in Orhoch once the Ice was at their door, but neither could they forget it. There is an old saying that they murmur still: _today’s harvest was sown in years’ past, and those who choose to forget it shall find their land barren for all their days to come._

And so it is that though the Domain of Orhoch lies abandoned to the snow and Ice, all children born to the people of Orhoch are given the name Orhochaven. For all children thus born are yet of Orhoch, and thereby of the King’s blood, shed a hundred-fold for Orhoch’s sake.

* * *

fin

**Author's Note:**

> References (broadly from this [map](https://bigthink.com/left-hand-of-darkness-map) and a few additional embroidered elements):  
>  **Asen Fastness:** the religious retreat where an unanswerable question was asked, the Foretelling group was destroyed, and the Weaver, Meshe, formed a new religion.  
>  **Ech** : the northern-most city in Orhoch Domain, the last resting point before Thangering Fastness. I made this place up entirely.  
>  **Orhoch:** the north-eastern tip of Karhide, beyond Charuthe and Shath. I made up the Orhoch Domain and its abandonment, but Orhoch does exist as a place in the book, and its people sheltered Getheren of Shath.  
>  **Pering Ice:** The ice sheet at the north of the Great Continent, ringing the north of Karhide. I have taken the cities of Shath and Orhoch to be part of the Pering Storm-border. The saltiness of the Pering Ice around and beyond Thangering Fastness is wholly made up, although the tundra and the permafrost is presumably there  
>  **Thangering Fastness:** A religious retreat of the Handdara cult. I couldn't pinpoint its location in the book, although the book does make reference to a Lord of Charuthe making a pilgrimage to Thangering, and so I took it to be in the far north. I therefore situated it as the northern-most habitable point of the Orhoch Domain.
> 
> All the characters are made up, except for Ong Tot Oppong, who is one of the named Hainish Investigators.


End file.
